Oliver of the Levant

by Debra Jopson

Babette pressed into the warm jumble of bodies and hum of voices imploring her to buy – evil-eye key rings, metal cedar tree trinkets, fresh dates, T-shirts stamped Whiter than White across the chest. Out of this huddle, a legless beggar carrying a dirty bundle wheeled a skateboard up to her and touched her feet.

  Babette smiled and leaned towards her. ‘Has she got a doll?’ The woman pulled the bundle of rags apart, revealing a baby with a grimy mouth, red cheeks and zonked eyes. The beggar held a dirty palm out to Babette, who hugged her handbag, yelped and almost stamped the baby’s head trying to get away. I handed the poor lady a twenty-lira note that Dad had given me. She kissed my fingers before I could pull away.

  Jess scowled. ‘Wotcha do that for? They told us at school those babies are rented out drugged so they won’t cry.’

  I ignored him and ran after Babette, who was pushing through the crowd, determined not to look back. I pulled her into the Horseshoe Café and guided her to a cane-back chair, where the lace of the hanky she ran under her eyes grew a wet shadow from her tears.

  She’s cried a lot since we got to Beirut.

  ‘I’ve never thought of someone like that dirty old hag with the baby being anything like me.’

  This was one of those weird adult statements. How could that lady with no legs be like Babette?

  ‘I feel so trapped.’ She started another fit of silent howling. For a long time I sat helpless, feeling adrift, as clouds clotted above us. On the street, cars flowed around and around again, pumping music. Jess’s head swivelled as if his neck was on a spring as he followed them.

  I nudged her. ‘Jess looks like one of those moving carnival clown heads.’

  Babette laughed, at last. ‘Oh, if I only had a ball I’d throw it in his mouth.’

  She scanned the café, clocking a manicured man with gold rings licking coffee cream from his spoon, and a lady with a tight hairdo tugging her hem over her crossed knee.

  ‘This is much more restful than doing battle out there.’ She smoothed the puffy skin under her eyes with her fingertips, then waved an imperious hand for a waiter. ‘Mineral water for moi and two instant coffees with cream for my young men.’

  A moment later, she grouched, ‘Who are all these children?’ Boys with scars on their scalps shook cardboard boxes at her from the sidewalk, hoping to sell Chiclets chewing gum.

  A lady nearby said softly, ‘They are beggars, but selling sweets gives them a little money. Life has become harder for them since we had troubles in Lebanon. Police shave their heads so they don’t have lice. Haram. It is sad in our beautiful city. A stain.’

  Babette’s voice was mournful. ‘Where are their parents?’

  A shrug. ‘Who knows?’

  The waiters chased the boys away. Cries as they collided with people strolling along the Hamra rippled back.

  ‘Quick, Jess, get some gum.’ Babette threw him a handful of piastres. ‘Monopoly money. I still don’t understand it.’ He chased after the chewing-gum boys. Way down the street, the one-eyed pusher lumbered up to him.

  ‘Oh, crap.’ I knocked my coffee over as I leapt up. It oozed over Babette’s cream cloak.

  ‘Oliver!’ she screeched.

  ‘I’ll get you a gin. It’s not that bad.’ Everyone was watching. I wished I had one of those black blankets the Saudi ladies wore so I could creep away unnoticed.

  Now Babette’s tears were splashing from her eyes right onto the ground. ‘I should have given that mother some cash. Find her and give her this.’

  She shoved a wad of banknotes at me. Jess was not in view and I ran in the opposite direction to him, through the crowds, hoping the lady wouldn’t try to kiss my hand again. I wasn’t sorry when I couldn’t find her. Back at the café, waiters had poured soda water over the coffee stains on Babette’s coat. She complained a bit more to the manager, who had his hand over his heart, apologising for what I’d done.

  Jess had bought a large box of Chiclets and his cheeks were puffed out as he chewed like a cow on a cud.

  Babette touched my arm. ‘Did you give her the money?’ I nodded. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing. But she did kiss my hand.’

  When we got home, I shoved the loot into my stash-hole. Babette closed her bedroom door and didn’t come out that night.

  I have to find out what has made her so sad. I have to dive back into her diaries.

  Next day, Babette said, ‘I hope that beggar has used the money to take her baby somewhere safe.’

  I hugged her and she held onto me, hard. I had never felt so tender and so guilty.

  12

  Eff Off

  By Good Friday I was desperate to at least speak to Sabine. I hung around the foyer, wearing the cleanest clobber that a quick ruffle through the clothes trail on my floor would reveal. I hadn’t been able to snaffle any more of Babette’s cigarettes, but I hoped by now that Sabine liked me for myself. She emerged in black, alone. I almost burst with relief. Her face was strained from crying, or trying not to cry. I couldn’t tell which. It made her seem much older than me.

  ‘Did someone in your family die?’ For a moment, I dared to hope that she was grieving over Abdo. I didn’t want the guy hurt; just a peaceful death, in his sleep.

  ‘You see I am sad? No, not my family who die.’ But I could tell from the song of her small sigh that she had suffered a loss.

  ‘Why are you so unhappy?’

  ‘You know, Oliver.’

  I thought for a moment that she was going to tell me she loved me. My face fired with a blush that felt like it would uproot my ginger hair.

  She hung her head and let her tears drop. ‘Our Lord.’ I moved to comfort her, but she took a step back. She kissed the gold cross chained near her bosoms. If I’d kissed it, too, I could have looked down into a spiral of wanting. But she was praying. I hadn’t realised she was such a full-on Christian. The sun slipped away from us all every night and then came back the next day – that miracle was all I could claim as my religion.

  ‘He die.’ I followed her finger pointing to the quarry, confused. Was she indicating the cats, the rats, the trash mounds that stank like old tabbouli? Then it dawned on me. She was pointing to Israel, where Jesus was crucified. Just over there, as if it had just happened.

  ‘I get what you’re on about. It’s like the things that happened a long time ago, or even a short time ago, could be happening now as well. In parallel time zones.’

  She laughed through her tears. It was like a sun shower to me. We understood each other. Success.

  ‘I don’t understand what you speak, Oliver.’

  The time seemed right to touch her hand, then maybe bring in some lip action. But her mother had some sixth sense that Sabine might be in danger of enjoying herself and shrieked: ‘Sabine. Sabine.’

  She smiled a silent sorry to me. Her hair fell across her face as she slipped past me to the courtyard outside, carrying a bucket that I hadn’t noticed. As she doled out sloshes of water, each plant seemed to lift its leaves to receive her offering. I wanted to be those leaves. And the cross on her chest, and every other thing that she cast her eyes on and grazed her body against, including the door she disappeared behind once more.

  I still had the key. I waited for her in the foyer, shivering fruitlessly all Saturday, dipping my nose in and out of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the book Al Orentz wrote about himself, all in tiny type, so I mostly studied the photos.

  On Sunday, Beirut woke slowly into the Easter cold. Through windows across the breezeway, I watched copper coffee pots balanced on small, fast flames in the dark. I tiptoed down the stairs to the foyer. A loud Arabic hubbub bubbled out of the open door to her flat.

  ‘Sabine.’ I ran upstairs to avoid the mother’s singsong call. From my bedroom window, I watched the two of them tottering away in their tight best clothes to the church bells’ rhythmic toll. Her younger brothers marched in suits like small adults with plump legs. Just over the border, Christ had risen from the dead. The family was going to
church to eat His body and blood.

  The thought made me hollow with a memory.

  When I was twelve, I heard a high, clear voice tumbling out of the sandstone church that I would walk past on my way home from school. I had followed the voice in as it vibrated inside the sandstone, deep as a currawong, then tinkly as a bellbird. A girl was gyrating her jaw below stained glass, sunshine throwing a patchwork of jewel colours over her. It took me a long while to realise that she was the currawong, she was the bellbird.

  I ached in the echo as she sang about hosts of angels. I waited for her to grow wings, like the carved cherubs fluttering above on the tall, sandy columns. Or, I imagined her having been born with wings, sprouting from each of her shoulder blades, now tucked behind her, hidden. One of the angels.

  How do they sleep on their backs?

  I buzzed off when she stopped singing and a preacher began to drone on. But I couldn’t forget the soaring sounds, the sickly honey scent and the feel of the wooden bench, smoothed by ample backsides. I went back every Sunday for four weeks, and eventually the girl smiled at me as she left the church. It made me imagine that I was up there with her, at angel level. A really stupid grin broke out on my mug; I tried to talk to her.

  ‘Eff off.’ She crossed her eyebrows in annoyance.

  Hot with shame, I still went back because the preacher had said that everyone could be saved by Jesus. I asked Him at church and I begged Him at home, kneeling in pyjamas, palms pressed together, eyes squeezed tightly.

  ‘Please, Lord, get Mummy off the smack.’ But neither Jesus nor His Father nor the Holy Spirit did a thing. Then Dad moved us again, reckoned Mum needed saving from the bad element in that suburb. There was always a bad element, though, and that was that with God and His Son and the Holy Spirit. The sun was more reliable.

  After that, I asked Grandad if he thought there was a God. ‘Only when I’m bettin’ and, even then, only when I’m winnin’.’

  ‘I don’t believe in one.’

  ‘Wise decision. Once you believe, they can manipulate you.’

  He didn’t say who they were, but it seemed to me that when Sabine went to church, she felt like being a good girl for God, and that was how her father was able to tell her who she should marry. But if she thought about how the sun still came up every day, no matter how she behaved, she might do just what she wanted.

  13

  Beit Zizi

  I’d planned to spend Easter Sunday experimenting with ladies’ black face powder as an ingredient in my exploding cigar gag. I reckoned it would give Mahmoud a buzz, once I got to know him. But Jess had warned me that we were to celebrate the risen Christ by scoffing chocolate eggs in the mountains with one of Sabine’s cousins.

  Dad said this cousin’s father was a friend of his from flying school. ‘Walid might inspire you to think about a flying career, Oliver. You’re a magician. That moment of lift when I take off makes me feel like a magician, every time.’ Dad’s little speech didn’t make me yearn for planes. It made me think of magic.

  Walid lived just outside Beit Zizi village, high in the sunlit mountain air, which snapped as if it was stiff with crystals. As we arrived, the church bells were vibrating. In the church square, a pale-faced Mary statue stayed sweet and patient as diesel dust from arriving taxis blasted her. Fresh flowers strung around her neck were already black.

  ‘Virgin territory,’ Dad said.

  ‘Oliver doesn’t want to be a virgin anymore.’ I finger-flicked Jess’s hand in a flash of anger – blabber mouth. Dad and Babette tried to hide smiles. Jess’s friend Brendan had sent me a condom as a joke after Jess told him about Sabine. But I was the winner. I carried it deep inside my wallet, where it embossed a circle into the leather. I lived in hope.

  Walid’s stone house with stained-glass windows hung on a hill in front of a waving forest. His mother Madame Khoury’s salt-and-pepper hair was bouffed up around her forehead like a smooth bird’s nest. I saw with a jolt that inside her big owl-eye glasses Sabine’s eyes peeped out. I loved those eyes in that moment. Jess and I followed Madame Khoury’s stiff, thick-heeled creep down the hallway. Jess pretended to push her. Dad tapped him hard and whispered, ‘Behave around ladies.’

  Madame Khoury gestured for us to sit in cane chairs overlooking fields of flowers and citrus trees, which fell away below us to the city and the bright sea. She bent to kiss each of us on both cheeks, wafting rose-perfumed powder tangled with the spiciness of church incense. ‘I am so glad you can come to my celebration. Walid has something special for you.’

  A short man with crinkled black hair came up the stone steps, cradling a cage of chirping chicks dyed yellow, orange, purple, blue and pink.

  ‘Oh, they’re so swee-eet.’ Jess tickled the wings, making the baby birds puff them out.

  ‘Walid has been playing with God’s palette.’ Madame Khoury beamed.

  Walid put the chicks down near a table laid with silver and shook our hands, but when he came to Babette, he swept up her fingers and kissed them. ‘Madame. There are no artist’s tools which could capture your beauty.’

  Babette tilted her head. I’d never heard her giggle before.

  A maid brought a tray clinking with iced lemonade. ‘Made from lemons grown on our trees,’ Madame Khoury announced.

  Walid fluttered his hands. ‘Oh, Maman, we have to have something much stronger.’

  Behind Madame Khoury’s back, Dad held his hands together as if he was praying and mouthed thank you to Walid, who brought out champagne.

  ‘Oh, wonderful. Dom.’ Babette wrinkled her nose at the bubbles and Walid. The maid gave Jess and me champagne and, before Dad could stop me, I threw mine straight down the hatch. I’d been practising that with water ever since I’d seen Abdo in our street. I burped and held out my glass for more.

  ‘Hey.’ Dad lifted a warning finger.

  ‘The rebel in the family,’ Walid grinned, as if he admired my nerve. To hide my blush, I bowed.

  ‘Not something to be proud of,’ Dad growled.

  Walid sized me up and said, ‘I suppose you prefer Bondi to Beirut.’

  ‘Yeah. Beach after school. It’s cool. Not like having to rattle up and down in a clapped-out bus and spend all day in a prison block in the mangy old mountains.’ I gave Dad my best smirk. It was the only way I could pay him back for The Straightening Out.

  ‘Oh, my beautiful mountains. The Mount Lebanon range, which make our hearts lift with national pride. You hate them.’

  ‘Apologise, Oliver.’ Dad made threatening eyebrows, as if I’d broken some law he’d just made up. I ran down to the orchard to get away from adults, who twisted everything. I wandered about, touching the bark of lemon trees, yearning for the blue mist rising from the bush eucalypts back home. I had to give in, though, when I heard the call to lunch. Yearning for Sabine, I hadn’t eaten a meal for days and was suddenly starving.

  A Khoury family album lay open at a yellowing photo of a family gathering. I recognised a younger Madame Khoury. Joseph, the concierge, and his wife had their children arranged around them, including a girl of about eleven with eyebrows like caterpillars.

  Walid tapped Joseph’s face. ‘You know him. My poor cousin. He was once entitled to land in this village. His father gambled it away.’

  ‘Oh, and their children.’ Babette winked at me.

  ‘Yes, Sabine. Sad that she must marry Abdo, that savage. But that’s what the family wants. He’s from our village, after all.’

  ‘Why’s he a savage?’ I pinched Jess’s arm so he would say nothing.

  ‘Works for a warlord. There’s a band of men here who want blood. Poor little Lebanon. All we can hope is that the trouble is over swiftly.’

  Babette paled. ‘Is … the trouble … about the Palestinians?’

  Walid held his palms up. ‘It is about the nature of the universe. Our small universe. There are feuds and grudges between families and former friends. Between villages. Sometimes people can use global politics, such as the Pal
estinian question, to settle their own grievances and make it seem that they are working for the greater good … But let’s have a drink. Much better to laugh and enjoy friends than to dwell on quarrels.’ He poured more champagne. I held my glass up and grunted when he bypassed it.

  ‘What do you think the answer is, to the Palestinian question?’ Babette’s soft voice surprised Dad, who stared as if he didn’t know her.

  ‘Give them a true home, of course.’ Walid grimaced. ‘But who, ever, wants refugees?’

  Madame Khoury apologised and went to lie down, saying she had a ‘me-grain’.

  Walid turned his mouth down. ‘Talk of war always gives her a headache.’

  ‘Me, too.’ Dad lit a cigar. ‘Babette’s keen to solve the Middle East crisis. And if she does, Oliver might cause another. He has a soft spot for sweet Sabine.’

  Babette frowned. Walid put his arm around me. ‘Haram. Poor you. The lady is spoken for.’ He said it in a tone I’d heard people use to console Grandad at Mabel’s funeral. It made me shiver. ‘At least a little fondness for Sabine might keep you here. You don’t have to apologise for feeling homesick. Your father was the same. What could we do with him in little, green England? Find some red dust and daggy sheep to make him feel at home?’

  Everyone laughed and, while they were distracted, Jess poured himself more champagne.

  The two men were off, reminiscing. Dad said that he’d always liked flying, but until he’d met Walid, he’d thought like a passenger.

  ‘Oh, he loved cars,’ Walid said. ‘He learnt to drive as a child on the farm in Australia and he knew how to start any make without a key. He blamed the British country folk for being so naive as to leave their doors unlocked. Several times I found myself zooming through hedge-rows, wishing for an ejector button as your father floored the accelerator.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad.’

  ‘Yes, Lachlan, it was.’ Walid hacked at the air with his hand. ‘He shredded the greenery and played chicken with oncomers. Usually, he made them swerve.’